MOSCOW, September 6 Andrey Lipov, head of Roskomnadzor, was sent a request to check the compliance of VPN services with Russian legislation in the official Android application store RuStore and if necessary, block these services, said the deputy chairman of the Council for the Development of the Digital Economy under the Federation Council, Senator Artyom Sheikin.
“The condition for the operation of VPN services in our country is the fulfillment of the requirements of Russian legislation, in particular, the law establishes that VPN applications cannot assist users in providing access to sites blocked in Russia. Considering that RuStore contains such a large number of VPN services , sent a letter to the head of Roskomnadzor to check the compliance of these services with the requirements of the legislation of the Russian Federation. I believe that if VPN services do not comply with Russian legislation, they should be immediately blocked and removed from RuStore,» Sheikin said.
The senator explained that RuStore proposes to install «more than 100 VPN services» that can be freely used on smartphones, while this store, in accordance with the decree of the Cabinet of Ministers, is «a pre-installed product on gadgets sold in Russia.»
The document, the text of which is available, notes that the need to check VPN services lies in the fact that these programs can be used to “violate established prohibitions, bypass court decisions, block Roskomnadzor and gain access to prohibited content.” At the same time, it is emphasized that the condition for the operation of these services is the fulfillment by them of the «requirements of Russian legislation.»
Earlier, Sheikin said that in Russia it is necessary to create an analogue of the «Chinese firewall» with the impossibility of bypassing the blocking of unwanted sites if Russian legislation is ignored by countries in the future.
In the Chinese segment of the Internet, a large-scale system of state censorship, often called the «great firewall», has been installed. At the moment, in mainland China, in particular, Google, YouTube, WhatsApp, social networks Twitter, Facebook* and Instagram*, Clubhouse, Twitch, as well as the websites of a number of the world's leading media are blocked. Instagram) is banned in Russia as extremist.